The origin of IPCC(1990) Fig 7.1(c) may be historically interesting, but far less than the history of its later abuse, mis-use, and falsification, combined into a fine marketing campaign.

– See pp.199-203 of FAR Chapter 7. Fig7.1(c) p.202, errs in its specific scale (Years before present) and the general Fig 7.1 caption (“global”). The latter clearly contradicts the text of pp.199-203, which several times expresses doubts about a “MWP-big” (global, synchronous, generally warmer than 1990), in contrast to LIA, generally thought to be more-or-less global. The experts didn’t believe in MWP-big, but in “MWP-mix,” i.e., warm in North Atlantic region and some others, but cooler elsewhere and high warmth neither global nor synchronous. They expressed relevant uncertainties requiring research, rather than thinking Fig 7.1(c) to be unalterable truth, forever, a “flat-Earth map.” Of course, the temperature of 1000AD is absolutely irrelevant to current and future temperatures, but it is a nice red herring.

– The well-caveated figure was gone by IPCC(1992), and IPCC (1995, 2001, 2007) saw science progress in normal fashion, with increasingly- better approximations, as scientists tried to reconstruct both global and regional temperature variations, working towards longer intervals. Every credible millennial reconstruction (including MBH99), had an MWP cooling into an LIA but they covered larger geographies that naturally had less extremes. They did not “make the MWP go away,” they just did not support MWP-big, which was never claimed by IPCC.

Fig 7.1(c) forgotten by almost all, until McIntyre in mid-2005

Since IPCC(1990) had been scientifically obsolete for years, and was not widely available, scientists weren’t thinking about MWP-big, although anti-science advocates often gave cherry-picked examples (Vikings in Greenland, grapes in UK) to claim it.

Even Fred Singer, in “Hot Talk Cold Science” (1999, p.56), while arguing for a MWP-big, cited p.203 of IPCC(1990), but did not think to employ Fig. 7.1(c). That was mostly forgotten until March-June 2005, when McIntyre and McKitrick re-introduced it, backed by strong marketing, involving influential folks, some of whose history is given in CCC.

– Washington thinktanks/front groups (Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cooler Heads Coalition and George Marshall Institute, where McIntyre and McKitrick had been “experts” since early 2004)

– (2006) the Wegman Report, whose “blueprint” was the 05/11/05 talk given by McIntyre

– Since then, “Fig 7.1(c)” has appeared in numerous booksand even more websites, generally attributed to IPCC(1990), although sometimes IPCC(1995) or just IPCC. Sometimes they even give the right page number (202), although Singer and Avery(2007), Alexander(2008) and Goreham(2009) all thought it was Fig 22 of IPCC(1995). Variants of “Fig 7.1(c)” appear widely. See Google images: medieval warm period graph. These are most commonly used to argue that a cabal of climate scientists hid the TRUE MWP-big by introducing the MHB99 hockey stick.

Most people’s graphs ascribed to IPCC were not images from IPCC. Although the curves are usually similar to Fig 7.1(c), typographical elements (capitalization, length of vertical words, font (serif versus san serif), dash at left or not. The erroneous “Years before present” was usually changed to “Years.” That shows that most people using this graph to proclaim MWP-big true and hockey-stick false, had not looked at IPCC(1990). If someone had a copy of IPCC(1990), why would they not use the real image?

In academe, this is called false citation, misrepresentation of a source, or falsification/fabrication. Such things can be academic misconduct, not because the curve is wrong, but because the different image (not labeled “after” or “derived from”, etc) strongly implies that the original source was not consulted.

Some have gone even further, distorting the graph, as was done in the Wegman Report. At least Wegman admitted in testimony that “No, I have not been able to obtain a copy of the 1990 report.”

By 06/25/05, McIntyre clearly had and wrote about did have IPCC(1990), followed by IPCC(1992) and IPCC(1995). Of course, as WMC notes, the real chronology made the 03/16/05 story nonsensical, but somehow the overall theme not only stuck, but propagated widely.

“Today we’ll help the climate science community identify the provenance of a graphic shown below, that was produced in 1990 by a mysterious organization known to insiders as IPCC.”

Later in the same post, he showed a scan/screen grab of the correct IPCC(1990) Figure 7.1 (a, b, c). Part (c) is NOT the image he’d been using since 2005.

What is the real provenance of that old image?

Tasmanian (non-scientist) John Daly was a “science advisor” for the Western Fuels Association. See p.11 for that, but pp.8-11 are well worth reading. (H/T John Robert Hunter). Daly died in early 2004, so we can’t ask him how he got/created that image. However, he certainly had it:

Did McIntyre get the image directly from Daly’s website? Or via someone else? In the interest of transparency and disclosure, inquiring minds want to know. Was all this deliberate or just incompetence (as per Napoleon)?

Wall Street Journal tells 2 falsehoods 06/21/05

McIntyre wrote 06/21/05 about a WSJ Editorial that day and followed the next day with more. Sadly, the WSJ Editorial (paywall) contained an unambiguous falsehood as it showed the same image, but wrote “Trend in average temperature over the past 1,000 years, exactly as shown in the 1990 report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dotted line represents mean.” Of course, it was not the exact image from the IPCC, and the dotted line did not represent the mean, so the WSJ wrote two clear untruths. Did they do this research themselves? Where did they get the graph? Inquiring minds want to know that also.

Inhofe used it again in The Greatest Hoax (2012)

Here p.33 has the (somewhat fuzzy) image, giving p.202, but of course, not where this image came from.

Some Chronology (more in CCC, pp.27-28, p.183, and M&M history with Myron Ebell, GMI)

Hence, the letters were publicized before the recipients likely even got them, certainly, Bradley had not, as he was hiking in Europe. Sending letters to people might be a normal way to get information. Publicizing the letters before they even got them is something else.

While this might seem like a well-organized marketing campaign, in which the Wegman Report became a part, some might claim it is just coincidence.

Summary

Although John Daly had a version of Fig 7.1(c) in 2001, it had been mostly forgotten for 15 years. Then McIntyre and associates rewrote history to promote it as 1990 IPCC truth that the hockey stick was invented to hide. The image propagated widely, often employed by people who really had no idea of its provenance and either ignored IPCC(1990) or did not read it. Again, it is not that the curve misrepresents Fig 7.1(c), but that using that curve without the surrounding caveats is a real cherry-pick, and using a different image strongly hints that someone did not have IPCC(1990) at hand.

This is a great example of the contrast between:
– science, which admits to uncertainty, works to lessen it by doing research, argues over real issues within the rules
versus
– anti-science where a long-obsolete flat-earth map is rediscovered and history rewritten to make it absolute truth, backed by an unsupported claim in a “dog astrology journal” by a guy with interesting views … and people actually believe all this and repeat it, endlessly, even in 2012.

There is no doubt that McIntyre’s March 2005 figure is the same one Daley had been using since 2001. Not only do they both capitalize “Medieval warm period” and “Little ice age”, and both amend “Years before present” to (correctly) read “Years”, but they both show the same blemishes on the 1700 AD mark (small dot, half way up on the right hand side) as well as the blemishes between the 1600 and 1700 AD marks above the line, and between 1200 and 1300 AD below the line. Other identifying marks include the thick line between the two blemishes, and the thick lines on the upper left and lower right corners of the box. Together these similarities, not shared with the original are proof that McIntyre’s image is just that from Daley.

I would suggest the fact that Daley had corrected his attribution before McIntyre’s first post indicates McInyre got the image from an intermediary.

Of course, the temperature of 1000AD is absolutely irrelevant to current and future temperatures, but it is a
nice red herring.

=========

It’s not irrelevant to claims.

As the pre-industrial temperatures have been higher than current temperatures, past temperatures higher than now falsify the claim that current temperatures are unprecedented.

If the variation in past temperatures is higher than the claimed increases, then you really have to be bonkers to claim any, let alone a high probability that the increase is due to anthropogenic effects.

Also, you can look at pre-industrial increases in temperature and look at the rates of increase (or decrease). If the current rate of increase is below these levels, then you again have a real problem claiming that its anthropogenic.

Since the current temperatures fail these tests, its baloney to claim high level of statistical significance for an increase.

Then there is the theorise. predict and test. e.g. Temperatures well below predictions. Popperian falsification.

Tom Curtis:
Thanks. As to the possible “intermediary,” I do note that Essex & McKtrick “Taken by Storm” (2002):

1) p.169 Figure 5.6, shows the “MWP/LIA” graph they created from data from Huang(1997), ignoring fact that it had been superceded by papers from the same research group saying in effect 500 years was pretty much as far as one should go with boreholes.

2) But p.262 has:
“It also has the advantage of being done in Tasmania, where long-time anti-Big Panel commentator John Daly lives. ” (paragraph about sea level rise).

Of course, at SEPP, Fred Singer often mentioned Daly, see this search..

As I noted in the post, SInger was claiming in SInger&AVery(2007) that the figure was from IPCC(1995), and we know Singer and McIntyre had been trading emails no later than11/18/03. See GMI, p.26, where Singer says:

Steve McIntyre has been very helpful in sending me a whole bunch of data. “

I is well worth reviewing the entire commentary from that meeting, as people toss ideas around that will appear later. This was the same trip on which M&M met Inhofe.
See CCC, section 5.1 for the chronology around that. I just wish that GMI had similarly identified attendees at other M&M Washington talks, like the 05/05/11 ones!

So Mr. McIntyre is being deceitful again and suddenly suffering from amnesia.

“I asked McIntyre as to the source of the graph, and he says he does not remember”

Yeah right! McIntyre is obsessed with details concerning Mann and Briffa and others going back to 1998, but cannot remember where he sourced a graph that forms the basis of the false claim that MBH98 was manufactured to hide the MCA?

Mr. McIntyre needs do much better than that lame excuse. Pity we cannot FOIA his emails to help him remember. How about those of his pal Ross?

[Much like Deming, who was (or so he says) sent this really really exciting email by “someone” saying “we must get rid of the MWP”. Or something like that. But, he can’t remember who sent it to him. Err, and he deleted it. Come to think of it, McI would be all over Deming if Deming wasn’t on McI’s side -W]

As the pre-industrial temperatures have been higher than current temperatures, past temperatures higher than now falsify the claim that current temperatures are unprecedented.

Even if this isn’t a strawman in the sense of never having been argued, it is certainly a strawman in the sense that it isn’t the strongest argument for AGW … it is in fact irrelevant to AGW, just as the fact that humans died of cancer before the discovery of tobacco is irrelevant to whether cigarettes are a major factor in lung cancer.

Human industrial activity that releases fossil carbon has resulted in the current accelerating increase in global average temperature. Falsify that. As John correctly said and you have failed to counter, “the temperature of 1000AD is absolutely irrelevant to current and future temperatures, but it is a nice red herring”.

If the current rate of increase is below these levels, then you again have a real problem claiming that its anthropogenic.

We have no problem claiming it because there is extensive physical theory and measurement that confirms it. It’s like cigarettes and lung cancer: if someone were to claim that they had evidence of high lung cancer rates prior to the discovery and use of tobacco, that would have no bearing whatsoever on the causative role of tobacco in lung cancer … on the contrary, the proof of the latter is reason to be highly skeptical of such claims.

> Thirty years ago I was communicating with Roger Pocklington a research oceanographer based at the Dartmouth Insitute. He was the first to remind me our careers had spanned at least two climate cycles. Sadly Roger did not last to see another one, but the solar cycle forecasts suggest if I can just hang on a few more years I will.

> Lamb’s article itself is an interesting discussion of wind circulation regimes in the north — a continuing theme in Lamb’s work.

We can also read this fall:

> Lamb is a terrific read. He’s a fine writer with an eye for detail. **The only reason his work fell out of favor was because it supposedly became obsolete with pseudo-quantitative Mannian multiproxy studies, which claimed the ability to make annual reconstructions.** Now they seem to be resiling from that and Wahl and Ammann say that they are only trying for “low-frequency”. In any event, if you believe, as I do, that the entire Hockey Team corpus is of little merit, then it’s time to re-read Lamb and see what he actually says.

I’m not sure why auditors gain by trying to sell that they believed the IPCC 1990 graphic was merely “an example of what climate scientists thought in 1990”. Reading the blog suffices to prove this wrong.

[Lamb’s work has been described as “the pinnacle” of the Olde Skoole climatology – see http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/sci_env_cooling.02 for a post I captured, from long long ago by mt. I can see why people admire his work – well, I can see two reasons. Firstly, because some people can read their own pet theories into it. But also because it was (at base, not the prediction bit) careful and meticulous and scholarly. What the people pushing it can’t see, though, is that it was terribly limited. It had little to say about physical mechanisms, no predictive ability at all, and didn’t use more modern proxies -W]

This was an interesting game, where the author of a quote had to be found. It seems that it was not too hard, as a comment from Steve makes clear.

Here’s the first paragraph from that comment:

> Yep, that wasn’t too hard. If you google it, you get my Heartland presentation. I’m embarrassed to say that, even though I prepared the Heartland talk only a month ago, it had slipped my mind, as the context was different.

Here’s the second paragraph:

> If one parses the Lamb article, while he doesn’t use the term “North Atlantic Oscillation”, Lamb pays very close attention in this and other articles to changes in wind circulation and attributed the “Medieval Climatic Anomaly” to this explanation. Lamb 1965 commences with a lengthy such exposition and his references (Lamb and Johnson 1961, say) are just as extensive

Tom Curtis should beware that auditors never really accept graphs uncritically. They don’t even accept them. They don’t need to: all they need to do is to mention them because they are example of what climate scientists think.

Not that they would cherry-pick examples of what climate scientists think, mind you.

[About 230. I didn’t realise McI had written so much about Lamb. As I said above, he was the pinnacle of an Olde Skoole. But using him now would be like using Copernicus to compute planetary orbits in preference to a modern almanac. Or again; analysing his work now sheds light on Lambs work, if you do it carefully; it sheds no light on modern work.

> **I’ve re-read section 7 of IPCC 1 [1990], which contains the graph used in the WSJ editorial.** I highly recommend that everyone interested in this topic take a look at IPCC 1. First of all, here is a scan of Figure 7.1 together with the original caption.

The first sentence is interesting, considering what John Mashey says above.

***

The post is less interesting than the discussion that follows with John Hunter, in a kind of encounter that I came to call “guest appearances”, a tag I maintain on my microblog, but can’t link here, for it triggers a spam filter.

> Pollissar et al use what I would call more old-fashioned methods used by Lamb, such as changes in glacier elevations or changes in vegetation altitudes, to deduce past climates. However, they link such changes here to changes in lake sediments, which provide a continuous record of change over the past century – as opposed to relying on moraine locations to measure glacier advance and retreat.

In the comment above, my location indicate a tag that might be interesting for our current research.

***

Since I’m here, here’s a comment from Steve in that same post I just cited:

> If you go back and read Lamb’s papers, they are thoughtful and interesting. Lamb had a relatively encyclopaedic knowledge and his view of the world was not trivially arrived at. […] I don’t count the HOckey Team corpus as evidence at all. For example, Hughes and Diaz 1994, still relied upon as a disproof of Lamb, is almost incoherent when you re-read it […] Our position is that the issues are open, not that IPCC 1990 is restored. Having said that, if the Hockey Team corpus is invalid, then the views of their predecessors and opponents need to be re-assessed.

> As an aside, I’ve left because I got the answer I was looking for (dont rely on the dendro reconstructions, at least not yet), and because I’ve decided that Steve is very bright and very good and I don’t trust his honesty.

I asked McIntyre as to the source of the graph, and he says he does not remember.

I think we should all demand McIntyre tell us the source of his graph. “Don’t remember” just doesn’t do it for me. He is the uber auditor, the setter of standards, the one who demands. “Don’t remember”. The hide of the man.

[Burrowed. Since you’re “new”, and for the edification of others: if you want to join the conversation here, you have to join the conversation. Sitting in the corner and randomly shouting irrelevancies while other people are talking is impolite. If you want that kind of thing, go over to WUWT -W]

Google results count is a bit funny. Even for this low count it shows you an estimate only. I got 228 initially. When I clicked through to the last page of the reusults I got 180 with the remark, that some similar results were omitted, and the offer to search once more with all results included. Clicking through once more results in 190 hits.

Maybe McIntyre’s memory can be jogged. Here area a few relevant possibilities:

1) Essex and McKitrick referenced John Daly in Taken by Storm(2002), although they didn’t have a version of FIg 7.1(c), just the graph they created from Huang’s data.

2) Singer certainly had seen the FAR, cherry-picked a quote from p.203, although didn’t use the graph in “Hot Talk Cold Science” (1999). He certainly as in contact with both McIntyre (no later than late 2003) and Deming.

From Willard Tony’s link William provided earlier, we get this other interesting comment by Tim Ball:

> I used Lamb’s 1988 book as the text for a graduate class in climate. It, and this comment by Archibald, underscores my argument that the IPCC has frozen climate science progress since its inception. Lamb knew what was going to happen as he recorded in his autobiography (1997).

The relationship between Lamb and Wegley seems to deserve due diligence. Sounds like a “paradigm shift” Kuhn would portray it. A new administration simply took over CRU.

There is a potential scientific thriller in that story. LeCarré amateurs, take note.

***

We also read a bit later this comment by tonyb, where there is this quote from Lamb “DEC 1994”:

> The idea of climate change has at last taken on with the public after generations which assumed that climate could be taken as constant. But it is easy to notice the common assumption that mans science and modern industry and technology are now so powerful that any change of climate or the environnment must be due to us. It is good for us to be more alert and responsible in our treatment of the environment, but not to have a distorted view of our own importance. Above all, we need more knowledge, education and understanding in these matters.

> The class of scientist who tend to be most unimpressed with IPCC-type climate science are geologists – which is where I got started in this. If you took an Oreskes-type survey among geologists, I don’t believe for a minute that you would get anything like IPCC solidarity. Unlike most scientists, geologists also happen to know a lot about climate history.

Lots of interesting stuff in this, thanks John and other contributors.

One minor modification, I think it’s wrong to say the “well-caveated figure was gone by IPCC(1992)” even though Jones et al. say that “the diagram had been dropped”. The 1992 supplementary report p. 141 says “We present a supplement to Section 7 (Folland et al. 1990b- hereinafter referred to as S7) … It should be read in conjunction with S7 to obtain a fuller discussion of observed climate variations and changes.” The text, to “introduce new findings”, outlines Briffa et al. 1992 and emphasise that the medieval warming it found was regional, otherwise it doesn’t seem to add to the topic. My reading of that is that the original Section 7 including the diagram still stood, with additional supplementary information, until the 1995 TAR.

[Interesting point. I think its arguable; I’d argue that fig C1 was their best update to 7.1.c -W]

Brown also refers to CA’s 2008/05/09’s blog post after the “here” in the following sentence:

> The convoluted transformation of the original graph from Lamb’s version (Figure 2) into the one used by the IPCC is documented here.

Then we get the MBH. Then a clash of paradigms is narrated:

> So we have two competing climate history stories-one developed over a lifetime of academic research mostly before the computer era, and the other derived from a scientist using modern statistical techniques and the extensive use of novel proxies interpreted in a highly sophisticated manner using computers.

After a dozen of figures and the obligatory Brueger’s the Elder painting, we get this sober description of the clash of paradigms:

> The divergence in the Mann/Lamb graphs (Figure 16) at this point is due to the considerable differences in the interpretation of the extent and warmth and extent of the MWP (outside our period of study) and the cold and extent of the LIA.

Interesting, but the Heartland document is unlikely to be the source of the Daley/McIntyre image. It does not have the characteristic blemishes found in the Daley/McIntyre image, is an almost direct reproduction of IPCC FAR WG1 7.1(c), and is correctly attributed.

No doubt John Mashey will be interested in what is now (I believe) the earliest documented used of the graph by deniers.

It, of course, entirely fails to mention the caveats in IPCC 1990, and interestingly enough, goes on to predict a further 1-2 degrees of natural warming.

Tom Curtis: yes, that sure looks like the real graph.
I’ve so far found ~~7 slightly different variants in books (or Wegman Report, where it is distorted), plus TGGWS.
A few others use Loehle(2007)~ as Truth. Then there all the web pages.

dave s: yes, good point, thanks. Next iteration I will word that better.

I’ve collected some notes on the Deming Affair on the thread referred in my Location. There are also some notes about our good Bishop’s political hit job elsewhere in the thread.

I won’t repost everything here. But I will point to this:

> The IPCC 1990 graph is an important reference point. Ross and I have used it in presentations […] We said loud and clear that this is what the specialists thought in 1990 — providing a specific reference to IPCC 1990.

> William, where in this post (or elsewhere) have I said that I accept this graphic? Read what I wrote rather than what you assume that I wrote. I observed only that this is what specialists thought in 1990 (as evidenced by its use in IPCC) before the Stick got oversold.

I’m not sure how the fact that the Auditor said that he accepts the graphic is essential in settling the matter William raised, i.e. seeming to accept uncritically. The word “uncritically” is quite obviously an editorial comment from William, and not something that “misrepresents” in any way what Steve actually said at one specific moment.

If one wishes to avoid this kind of pea and thimble game, it is important to remain as objective and pinpointed as possible. Unless one has all the time in the world, it is important to limit the scope of criticism. In any case, it is important not to expect reciprocity, as all this hurly burly might be considered promotion “in a technical sense”:

The relevant section is 5.2, **Evidence for a Medieval Warm Period**, although Lamb gets mentioned in earlier sections. Section 5.2 justifies why our good Bishop refers to H&D94 as a “review”. The authors themselves speak of a “critical review” (p. 132). Here’s how it starts:

> Recent work based on the rigorous application of modem techniques of historical analysis yields a somewhat different picture of European climate in the Middle Ages to that described by Lamb. For example, for the region of western and central Europe (excluding the British Isles) that he has studied, Alexandre’s (1987, p. 808) conclusion is that, “the ‘Medieval climate optimum’ was not reached around 1150-1200, but around 1300.” Ogilvie (1991, p. 249) in her analysis of Iceland’s climate reaches conclusions less at variance with those of Lamb (1977), but she points out the weakness (or even absence) of reliable specific evidence for much of what has become accepted as fact.

There is also the mention of Guiot 1992:

> At least one attempt (Guiot, 1992) has been made to combine European documentary evidence with tree-tings and ice-core data. The only documentary record used that spans a major part of the Middle Ages is the decennial estimates of temperature in Iceland, but only for the decades from A.D. 1170 to 1450; the other records covering the first part of the millennium are tree-rings for various parts of Europe and Morocco and oxygen isotope data from two Greenland ice cores, in the form of quasidecadal or even longer term means.

Then follows a bit about Chinese climate, a story that readers might know, since it that has been “promoted” in a technical sense, and not uncritically.

tom curtis: “No doubt John Mashey will be interested in what is now (I believe) the earliest documented used of the graph by deniers.

It, of course, entirely fails to mention the caveats in IPCC 1990, and interestingly enough, goes on to predict a further 1-2 degrees of natural warming.”

can explain to the audience what a “denier” is, in your own words, please

[Questions are good but so is doing your own homework; getting other people to do it for you will ill-equip you for independent thought later on. As usual, you’ll find wikipedia could have answered them for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_denier -W]

Searching over Alexandre (1987) at Steve’s, the first hit was this comment by Tom Curtis:

By what leap of faith do you conclude that a graphic in a 2002 textbook is derived Tickell 1977 (or some ur-document) rather than, for example, IPCC 1990?

Further, why do you suggest the obscure Tickell 77, which is not referenced by IPCC 1990 as the source over Lamb 1988, which is referenced (along with Alexandre 1987) as the source of information suggesting a warm north Atlantic region in the MWP, in the text adjacent to Fig 7.1?

Apparently, Steve, for you speculation trumps evidence whenever it allows you to make accusations against climate scientists.

Following-up on my analysis of Tom Curtis guest appearing at Steve’s, we immediately see the efficacy of measured criticism, culminating in a very good comment, of which my favorite part is this one:

One wonders if your and McKittrick’s narrative you bothered to inform audiences that in the experts opinion in 1990, the MWP “may not have been global”, and that the details were “poorly known” and the data “frequently sparse”. Certainly these salient facts receive no mention in you 2007 post.

You could, of course, more accurately have said that the graph is an important reference point, stating the uncertain opinion of the experts expressed with much qualification – but that narrative wouldn’t have “sold much stock” for all the fact that it happens to be truthful.

Slight typo – McKitrick’s APEC talk was on the 4/4/05, not 5/5/04, or 5/4/05 (in the chronology).

It turns out that the version of the graph used by McKitrick is identical to that used by Daly and McIntyre. Unfortunately that doesn’t help solve the mystery as to where McIntyre got his version as McKitrick may have got his from McIntyre.

McKitrick does correctly attribute the graph.

One interesting point is that there is no sign of McIntyre’s supposed narrative in this talk. McIntyre has said:

“The IPCC 1990 graph is an important reference point. Ross and I have used it in presentations – but differently than Swindle. We said loud and clear that this is what the specialists thought in 1990 — providing a specific reference to IPCC 1990. You don’t imply that it’s what IPCC climate scientists are selling right now. Durkin could still use it as a segue to the visually appealing bits about the MWP and LIA by explaining that that’s what people thought only 16 years ago.”http://climateaudit.org/2007/05/08/swindle-and-the-stick/

There is however, no mention of “what the specialists thought” in McKitrick’s presentation. On the contrary, we are told that the MWP “is an interval …during which many places around the world exhibited conditions that seem warm compared to today.” We are told, “the MWP … shows up strongly in the data”. The purported subtlety that distinquishes McIntyre and McKitrick’s use of the graph (according to McIntyre) is simple not present in McKitrick’s presentation.

> It is very difficult to attibute a temperature or any other cause to a proxy series. Some, like Joel Guiot, tried to take a tree ring record and compare it with a modern instrumental record to create a regression formula, which is then used to infer pre-instrumental temperatures from tree rings. Of course, the problem that correlation does not guarantee causation is ever present.

Readers will notice that the opening line of the OP is to proclaim that the NAS was wrong about something:

> The NAS Panel claimed that MBH98 was the “first systematic” multiproxy study. It wasn’t; it didn’t even claim to be, citing Bradley and Jones 1993 and several other studies of the same vintage as predecessors. Crowley was a peer reviewer for the NAS panel, who presumably relied on him to catch this sort of mis-step. He should have caught this, but didn’t. So what was the distinctive contribution of MBH98 – if it wasn’t the “first” multiproxy study?

As a follow on to my prior comment, it is interesting that McIntyre’s blog post on the topic incorporates the same elements as does McKitrick’s discussion in section 2 of his talk.

The talking points are, Deming, Fig 7.1(c), Huang, and the graph that could sell stock (the Hockey Stick). Having said that, McIntyre does not endorse the graph as factual, so while it is very probably they discussed the talking points, it appears they may have been on different pages.

You’re quite right: McKitrick does not include Steve’s observing nuance. In fact, he does not mentions Lamb. But the remaining of the narrative is the same as Steve’s, which is the same as our good Bishop’s. Or perhaps the other way around, since sameness is not exactly symmetrical in our context.

We also see the same Deming quote, a quote we saw recycled yesterday, which we also see in our good Bishop’s political hit-job:

> With the publication of the article in Science, I gained significant credibility in the community of scientists working on climate change. They thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science in the service of social and political causes. So one of them let his guard down. A major person working in the area of climate change and global warming sent me an astonishing email that said “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.”

The logic behind the first sentence escapes me. To see why, here’s a bit of research I did at Keith’s. If we look at the source where this quote is excerpted, we have this other anecdote:

> The week the article appeared, I came into my office one morning to find a voicemail message from a reporter for National Public Radio. [Then Deming fantasizes.] But all of my fantasies were immediately dispelled. The reporter focused in on the last sentence in the Science paper. He asked me, did I really mean to say that? Did I really intend to imply that the warming in North America may have been due to natural variability? Without hesitation, I said “yes”. He replied, “Well then, I guess we have no story. That’s not what people are interested in. People are only interested if the warming is due to human activities. Goodbye.” And he hung up on me. It was my first realization that the media intentionally filter the information the public receives.

The climate industry approaches Deming because of his study. A journalist approaches Deming to confirm that he does not believe in AGW. It seems that the climate industry is being schooled where a journalist is not, don’t you think?

Distorted is a bit of an understatement. I have taken the original IPCC graph and Wegman’s “digitization” thereof and overlayed them. I rescaled the Wegman plot such that the x- and y-scale of the plots match (tricky for the x-axis, as it’s irregular in the original IPCC plot). Wegman’s plot is shifted by several decades, has the modern period cut off, adds extra wiggles and has a larger amplitude.

3) PDF of McKitrick & McIntyre talk for GMI+CHC 05/11/05, sourced from Dan Vergano’s FOIA from Wegman. Presumably M&M gave it again that day on Capitol Hill, for an audience whose attendance I’d love to know, given the events over the next month or so.
The date auto-updates when PDF is created from PPT. This was labeled by Wegman Report as 09/07/05.

p.10, the Daly-like graph ascribed to IPCC 1995.

p.11: The graph from Essex&McKitrick(2002), i.e., from Huang(1997) data, but not from that paper. By the 1998, that research group had decided that more than 500 years was not so useful (Pollack, et al (1998). This is another flat-earth map, cherry-picked by ignoring obvious later research.

p.12 Deming quote, now ascribed to Science 1995.JSE(2005) had morphed to Science (1995), which of course makes the story much better, moving from JSE to Science and from 2005 to 1995. The credibility of this story might have been slightly higher had Deming actually written this when he claimed it happened, in 1995.

4) Then see talk with transcript, PDF Created 06/17/09 by Mark Herlong. McKitrick is portrayed in transcript as delivering the first part, including (bold mine):

p.5: the Daly-like graph:

‘This was reflected in the IPCC 1990 report which has a schematic illustration of the state of the climate, or at least the temperature of the climate, showing a long Medieval Warm Period, then a Little Ice Age and then a recovery to the present (Figure 4). But we have only come part way back up to where we were in the medieval era.‘

Hence, the original 2005 PPT as delivered said 1995, but by 2009, when the transcript PDF was created, 1995 had been fixed to 1990, finally.

p.6 continues, before getting to Huang(1997)

‘So if you want to sell the story that we are now in uncharted territory as far as the climate goes and that we are experiencing unusually rapid and unprecedented warming conditions, it is very hard to do that if you have the Medieval Warm Period sitting in the background suggesting that this isn’t at all unprecedented.’

p.6: Deming quote is still ascribed to Science 1995.

Conclusion.
1) I’d allege there are multiple false citations and misrepresentations(falsifications) here. M&M either had not read IPCC(1990) or they ignored all the caveats.

2) The timing indicates that this talk was likely quite influential for some folks in Washington, even ignoring fact that it became the “blueprint” for the Wegman Report. See CCC pp.23-24. Congressional attack on the hockey stick was just what Barton/Whitfield/Ebell/Perhach needed to distract from the Cooney fiasco 06/08/05.

Tom Curtis:
‘Slight typo – McKitrick’s APEC talk was on the 4/4/05, not 5/5/04, or 5/4/05 (in the chronology).’
Right, thanks. (WMC: can you fix to 04.04/05?)

1) PDF of McKitrick & McIntyre talk for GMI+CHC 05/11/05, sourced from Dan Vergano’s FOIA from Wegman. Note that the date auto-updates when PDF is created from PPT. This was labeled by Wegman Report as September 2006. Presumably it was given again that day on Capitol Hill.

See p.10, the Daly-like graph ascribed to IPCC 1995.
p.11: The graph from Essex&McKitrick(2002), i.e. ,from Huang(1997) date, but not from that paper, and long-superceded.by the same research group, which decided ~500 years was the limit at that point.
p.12 Deming quote, ascribed to Science 1995.

2) Then see talk with transcript, PDF Created 06/17/09 by Mark Herlong. McKitrick delivers the first part, including:

p.5: the Daly-like graph:

‘This was reflected in the IPCC 1990 report which has a schematic illustration of the state of the climate, or at least the temperature of the climate, showing a long Medieval Warm Period, then a Little Ice Age and then a recovery to the present (Figure 4). But we have only come part way back up to where we were in the medieval era.’

Hence, 1995 was fixed in the transscript, but the original PPT as delivered said 1995.

p.6 continues, with Huang(1997)

‘So if you want to sell the story that we are now in uncharted territory as far as the climate goes and that we are experiencing unusually rapid and unprecedented warming conditions, it is very hard to do that if you have the Medieval Warm Period sitting in the background suggesting that this isn’t at all unprecedented.'</blockquote

a) Ascribes the Daly-like graph to IPCC in 1995, and that had not changed when given in Washington in May.

b) The Deming quote is properly ascribed to JSE on p.4:

‘David Deming (2005) “Global Warming, the Politicization of Science, and Michael Crichton’s State of Fear.” Forthcoming, Journal of Scientific Exploration, v.19, no.2.’
But somewhere between April and May, JSE(2005) became Science (1995).

> Since you are a fiction enthusiast, you will surely appreciate Deming’s taste:

In State of Fear, Michael Crichton takes the thesis he first espoused in Aliens Cause Global Warming and expands it through the vehicle of a fictional thriller. Fiction can be used very effectively to promulgate social and political causes. Classic examples include Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (1957).

1) IPCC(1990) was a false citation for that (Daly-identical) image, which did not come from there, even though there is a similar curve. Of course, IPCC(1995) is even worse. A proper citation might have been to Daly’s website or wherever McIntyre got it, but the crucial indication is that he did not seem to have read the surrounding text by 03/16/05, although he clearly had done so, three months later.

2) For many years, almost anyone using a similar figure (to argue for MWP-big) has been using one of various different images that never came from IPCC(1990), much less IPCC(1995). That includes Inhofe(2012), who used the same image as M&M.

Willard has mentioned Bishop Hill, aka Andrew Montford. here, I remind people of dog astrology in an archived 2010 Wikipedia talk page. This was quite amusing. Taking a break serious writing, I commented on a Wikipedia Talk page that had been getting 10-20 edits/day. For a day, stunned silence occurred. Then people kept trying to remove the comment (remember – this was a Talk page, not the article), for one reason or another. No one would ever refute it or even address it. WMC kept putting it back. It finally aged out. However, I do believe that topic (including the Deming (misrepresented by Lindzen) and Lindzen (misrepresented by Montford) chain will deserve another look.